On being banned

There’s nothing worse for readers than being either kept in a queue or having to go through Google’s super clever [they think] photo captcha and with the best will in the world, one tends to stay in RSS to read the site and avoid all that c**p. All of us are busy or not and if not, we become busy when faced with things like that.

Here at NO, there is no captcha and only occasionally applied moderation, with warning, in order for you to be able to comment freely. However, there are two different anti-spam systems which work on different principles and they can get a bit pedantic at times. Sure they keep out the baddies by and large but there are a couple who can get past it any time – these are usually picked up by human eyes which see them when I’m not about – it’s like OoL with more than one checking and these eyes know the blacklist and various little moves to get in by the backdoor.

Then there is my host and the provider, not to mention WP system itself – I use an older version, which was better than the current offering. None of that is secret information. So when, of late, I’ve been finding some of the good guys in spam and/or pending, it’s been a puzzle, particularly as they’ve been commenting away up to that point without problem. Sometimes it’s multiple links which do it, sometimes key words in the text bank, sometimes New Google system itself.

I’d like to apologize on behalf of the system to Banned whom I found this morning in pending. Why on earth it would do that to him I don’t know – it used to do that to all my blogfriends and they were getting as p***ed off by it as I was. Most of us understand the tech to a point and some of us a little further than that but we’re not techie by any means. Therefore, something which basically works we’re loathe to change in any way and it’s one reason I keep this theme – no other theme has quite the little tricks and bells and whistles which this does, in ways which are not immediately apparent to the reader.

Speaking of banning, I think I’m currently banned from Counting Cats – I know he doesn’t like my sniping at rationalists but it might be that it’s not specifically him doing it – and I’m simply going to spam for some reason, i.e. the system is doing it. Possible, though I suspect I’m banned. Trouble is, my emails also don’t get through and I’m no multiple emailer.